"Where should I park my store?"

At Daily Grommet, we have a new appreciation for the challenges of parking after a recent visit from the bGreen Mobile Showroom. Our office has a narrow shared driveway (which we have trouble parking in ourselves), plenty of street parking and a municipal lot nearby, too, but it gave me pause when bGreen's co-founder Barry Greenstein emailed me before our meeting with the inevitable, if unusual, question, "where should I park my store?"

The bGreen Mobile Showroom is a big and impressively green Fed-Ex style box truck, and Barry and co-founder Lee Schneider are selling eco and environmentally friendly consumer products and building materials right off the back of it. We watched from the window as Barry expertly maneuvered the Mobile Showroom until it was right out in front of the office and we all could visit with him inside. We learned that he's been driving all over New England -- hence his parking expertise -- to festivals and street fairs and to the homes of people interested in eco-conscious choices for tile and flooring, and they have examples and samples available right there. Barry and Lee also have a number of products available to purchase on the spot. In fact, they have several Grommets in the wild in the bGreen showroom, including Chicobag, ecosystem life journals, Twist, and Big Dipper.

The bGreen team is working to raise awareness of green alternatives, particularly for home design and building materials, and they believe that it starts with small consumer products like cleaning products, re-usable shopping bags and notebooks made from recycled paper. We think they're on to something, of course. If you're in New England this spring, keep an eye out for the bGreen team. You can't miss them!